Title – Searchmetrics

Content

Definition
Why is the title important for SEO?
What does a good title look like?
Special case DMOZ
Titles in the Searchmetrics Suite

Definition

A meta page title is an element of an HTML document. With the help of meta titles, a webmaster assigns a unique title to the main page and each subpage of a website. Ideally, the meta title briefly and concisely reflects the content of the page in question, including the main keyword or main keyword combination.

The meta page title is a ranking-relevant component of the onpage optimization and is used by search engines for the search snippets in search results.

The meta title is often counted among the meta tags. In fact, this is a part of HTML code, not a tag. However, for the sake of simplicity, the meta title is classified in the meta information group, as it can also be read and used by search engines.

Why is the title important for SEO?

The meta title fulfills important tasks:

1. It is relevant for the ranking.
2. It summarizes the content of the website in a brief and concise manner.
3. Ideally, it can increase the CTR (click through rate) in the SERPs (search engine result pages) if it is chosen interesting enough.

Compared to many other ranking factors, the meta title is one of the criteria that can have a big impact with minimal effort. Because the page title stands out from the competitors' meta titles, a website that is listed less highly in the search results can still achieve a respectable click rates.

One keyword, one page

Many webmasters often ask about the optimal heading tag design. The following principle has proven its worth here:

„Focus on one main keyword (or combination of keywords) on a website“

Consequently, this main keyword should also appear in the meta title and as far up as possible. But this also means that each meta title is unique on the overall page.

Example:

A category page for an online shop has been created for "red tennis socks". The site itself offers red tennis socks from different manufacturers. Therefore the title of the meta page should also contain this combination of keywords.

For each topic it is necessary to create a page with a clear user intent. The "red socks" topic has the user intent “shopping”, so it is initially in good hands on the shop category page (and probably not on the shop blog). Various related search terms are included in this topic, such as red socks, socks red, socks in red, reddish socks. In order to design a title, you need to pick the most important keyword from that keyword cluster, usually with the highest search volume, and place it as far up the beginning as possible.

The source text should, for example, contain the following:

Red tennis socks in the xy-shop

To increase the chances of a higher CTR, the title could still be changed:

Red tennis socks: huge selection, reasonable prices

What is the best length for the meta title?

Google and other search engines correctly measure the length of the meta title not according to the number of characters, but according to the pixel size. But for the sake of simplicity, every SEO and webmaster should be targeting an approximate length of roughly 70 characters, including spaces.

Important: if the page title is too long for Google, it will be automatically shortened!

How should you write your page titles?

Since the meta title is not only relevant to rankings, but also to the first element of a website that can be seen in the search engine result lists, webmasters and SEOs need to pay great attention to maintaining this HTML component. Like the meta description, it is the first figure on the website.

Google itself provides tips on how to compose meta titles in its webmaster reference pages: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?rd=1

Due to the main keyword in use, most of the available space is usually already taken. For the rest, you should choose the most consistent additions possible, for example, special features of this page compared to the competition in the SERPs. The authors of the titles should also be careful not to repeat elements too often in other meta titles on the website.

If you are creating the page titles for large websites with many subpages, you can also use dynamic, automated processes, but you still need to provide maximum individuality despite the automation.

Special case: DMOZ

If a website is registered with DMOZ, search engines can also use the title saved there if the title entered on the website in question doesn't exist or doesn't make much sense. If you want the meta title not to be accepted by DMOZ, you can specify this in the HTML code by adding the

tag.

Background: When Google and other search engines were nowhere near as busy or as efficient as they are today, much of the information available on the Internet was based on so-called web directories. The largest and most independent of its kind to this day remains DMOZ. For search engines, primarily Google, the website description stored there was valid information, which was then used directly for the search snippet instead of the meta description, if it was not stored.

Titles in the Searchmetrics Suite

In the Search Experience section, the titles of the individual URLs can be displayed within each keyword table. By clicking the "+" in the upper right corner of the table, this can be adjusted as needed.

In the Content Editor in Content Experience, in addition to content, the title and description could also be created and edited directly, so that to comply with character limits.

In the Site Experience, the crawled URLs can be analyzed in the Content/Titles section. Here you can quickly and easily uncover wasted potential, e.g. caused by too long titles. In addition, you can identify and quickly eliminate risks arising from duplicate, missing, too long or too short titles. The table at the bottom of the page shows in detail the title and the corresponding URL, which is the problem, so that you can react as quickly as possible.